HUNT’S HEADLINES comes from my buddy Todd Hunt who’s dedicated to wrapping communication lessons in laughter. He’s a guy who notices the humor in the little things, then sends his commentary out into the world (or at least to his subscriber list). (Sign up at http://www.toddhuntspeaker.com)

This recent entry tickled my funny bone:

I’ve been on a word kick, I know…but wrong is wrong.

The latest offender?

Way. As a replacement for “much.”

You hear it in casual conversation…“He’s way heavier since he got divorced.”

That’s not correct, of course. It should be “much heavier.”

Now we’re seeing it in respected national publications, such as this front-page article in an advertising trade journal:

“Pampers’ breakthrough new Dry Max is 20% thinner and way more absorbent that its predecessor.”

Can’t we say “much more?” Or “far more?” Or even just “more?” It’s way cooler.

It’s wonderful to know I’m not alone in helping writers improve their craft and taking that extra step in making correct word choices.

In particular, I appreciate the unyielding effort of Maeve Maddox, whose Daily Writing Tips faithfully shows up in my inbox every day. She digs into the background and contemporary use of English-language verbiage with gusto.

Here’s what Maeve wrote to distinguish barbarous and barbaric, included here with her permission.

Both words derive from a Greek word meaning “foreign.” The original word was coined as a nonsense word to indicate the sound of a language other than Greek. For the ancient Greeks, the only civilized language was Greek. Anything else was gibberish.

At first a “barbarian” was simply a non-Greek, a foreigner. After the Persian wars, the word took on a pejorative sense. A barbarian was not just foreign; he was uncivilized and brutal.

As far as the Greeks were concerned, the Romans were barbarians, but the Romans adopted the word to refer to any nation outside the sphere of Greek or Roman civilization.

Both barbaric and barbarous were in English by the 16th century. Barbaric was used with the meaning “foreign, strange, outlandish,” Barbarous first meant what the Romans meant by it, “not Greek or Latin,” but it soon came to mean “uncultured, savage,” and by the 1580s had taken on the sense of “savagely cruel.”

Would you just love to have a 24/7 sales team automatically working to brand you as the go to person in your field so you don’t have to even leave your office? Would you like to see how your eBook, special report, and articles make up part of what I call “The Big Three Marketing Machine”? Open your mind to discover the great power of these now.

One. The Short eBook

I believe in quality, so put some effort into your book to build your reputation and credibility to be the expert in your field.

Your ebook can be anywhere from 20-100 pages of a similar topic as your article and special report. It has sections or chapters. Each nonfiction book chapter will have a title and sub-title reflecting the particular problem you will solve. For each chapter, you will use the “Fast-Forward Writing Technique” ( Ch 2 or my writing book) that is a blueprint for creating an engaging chapter with just one edit.

Don’t undercharge for your eBook. Many Online buyers are willing to pay a lot for specific skills. Charge $14.95-$79.00, even more, depending on what you think your audience will pay. If they need it, or think they must have it because of an emotional need, you will sell your books at any price. eCourses can sell for even $100 or $400.

Don’t worry about stealing. You won’t lose anything. Think of your electronic pieces as library books, borrowed by some, bought by many. At the end of each book, list all of your other reports, books or services with a live URL to click. Include even your ezine link to subscribe. When shared online, the battalions of web users–your mighty 24/7 sales force—will read your words and pass them on, keeping your information in the buzz and making you famous. If not famous, at least financially well off. Smile.

If you have a print book, it can also be part of this powerful team.You can build an eBook from articles or you can create articles from your eBook.

Two. The Special Report

Expand your article with stories, examples, and resources to create your new Special Report. Create 4-20 pages of specific information your audience wants. Charge $6.95-$10.95 or more for this report. Upload your sales message and product link to as a landing page on your site. Be willing to give this away as a special bonus for some of your more expensive products or services.

Today, in the year a low economy, we repackaged a lot of different products. We called them “Recession Specials” that included teleseminar transcripts, MP3 audios of teleseminars, and parts from longer books updated as Special Reports. We priced them low at $6.95 and the sales have been amazing. At the end of each of these, we put opportunities to buy my other related products or services (the upsell).

Three. The Article

The article is the key to branding you and getting that targeted free traffic to your website. Make sure you submit 1-2 a week consistently. This shows you as the trusted mentor, the “go to” person, the expert in your field. It attracts your audience to you because they know you know something they want or need. Attraction marketing works.

When your audience sees your articles, they know you are the savvy expert; they start to trust you because of the volume of quality articles you submit; and they visit your site and start to buy products from it.

The word processor brings obvious advantages to writers. The ease with which you can write and revise, having typing and spelling mistakes corrected as you go, leads to…carelessness. I’m not simply referring to over-reliance on spell-checkers – that’s been covered adequately in other articles* on this site – but to sloppy style and composition.

It’s all too easy, as I have found in my nearly 30 years of using word processing software (I started with WordStar 3.1 on CP/M80 for the archeologists among you), to write using these tools. The obvious advantage is that it is easy to go back and change your words and your mind about what you want to say. But one of the serious disadvantages is that you can write half a sentence, break off and come back to write the other half, which may not match the first half in style, content or overall meaning.

Of course, this is technically possible with any other writing method – but somehow it seemed harder to stop in the middle of a sentence with a pen or a typewriter. In any case, with a typewriter, you felt honor-bound to finish the page. Dropping one piece of writing mid-sentence, taking out the sheet of paper, re-setting margins, etc. and continuing the original on the re-inserted piece of paper usually didn’t work too well.

This ability to stop writing a sentence, do something else, and continue from where you left off without always finishing the thought with which you started can make for very disjointed writing.

The “something else” can be totally unconnected with writing (food breaks and the like) or can be something writing- and computer-related (e.g. answering an e-mail message or Twitter message – in a completely different writing style to the one used in your main writing assignment) or can even be within the same document, going back and revising something that’s already been written.

While writing this piece, I’ve been guilty of all three types of mid-sentence breaks. Can you see them? I hope not, because I do go back and re-read what I have written, matching style and making sure the logic flows neatly from one part to the next.

However, it does seem painfully obvious to me reading some writing (including some of my own past work) that the flow of thought hasn’t been checked, and that the “first fine careless rapture” is the final published product.

It may not be as exciting to polish a diamond as to dig it out of the ground, but unpolished uncut diamonds are not nearly as valuable as their processed counterparts. Take time to polish your gems before putting them on display to the world.

Many experts have all the ingredients to be successful published authors; they have a book inside them but cannot get it out. What they lack is the “recipe.”

Recipe Secret #1: Write in pieces. It is hard to get started when you visualize the entire project. What is interesting to you right now? How do you explain something verbally? Write it down. Write a paragraph or two or more on it. You will figure out later where it will be in your book. Then write another piece. Skip around; write on whatever interests you. I wrote my last book in less than two weeks because most of it was just assembling pieces previous written for my newsletter, website, and speeches.

Recipe Secret #2: Assemble chapter piles. Divide your articles and short thoughts into piles; one pile for each chapter. Visualize what you have and see what you do not have yet. Write some more pieces to fill in the holes.

Recipe Secret #3: Don’t start at the beginning. Pick up the chapter that is the shortest, the easiest or the most fun. I find that the smallest chapter pile is the most fun.

Recipe Secret #4: Draft the first chapter last. The first chapter tends to be an introduction to the subject and book. Writing a book is an exploration, a journey. You will do a lot of research on line as you write. The book will evolve and take a different shape than what you initially had in mind. So write the introductory first chapter last.

Recipe Secret #5: Rough draft the entire manuscript before going on to the second draft; the Content Edit. Do not improve, rewrite, or massage each chapter. Progress to the next chapter pile. Just get the piles off the floor and into the computer.

For those who have been following Jessica Cox (www.rightfooted.com) — the first woman without arms to earn her pilot’s license — check out her latest adventure. It’s her first surfing lesson, beautifully photographed in a short video clip. Click or copy/paste this link into your browser:

Larry Robertson had lots of people to thank at a recent book launch party in Tucson, Arizona, including me, his editor. For a review of his new book A Deliberate Pause, see Book Review page on this blog.